Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: THURSDAY, December 23, 1993                   TAG: 9312230020
SECTION: SPORTS                    PAGE: B3   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: Bill Cochran
DATELINE:                                 LENGTH: Medium

STRIPED BASS ACTION PICKS UP AT SMITH MOUNTAIN LAKE

The locator was showing a thick group of fish beneath the boat that stretched from 17 feet down to 41 feet. Teass stayed on the school like a pointing dog tracking running quail.

"I never got off of them for a full quarter-of-a-mile," he said.

Where they shad? Alewives? Threadfins?

No! Teass figure he'd located what anglers have been attempting to uncover for weeks at the 20,000-acre lake, a huge, wintertime concentration of striped bass.

He backed off the fish and headed for Campers Paradise, a business his family has owned since the early days of the impoundment. At the marina, he picked up his brother, an uncle and a friend. With locator paper showing seven full screens of fish, Teass didn't have to twist any arms to round up fishing companions.

"I went back over the area where I'd spotted the fish and as soon as they started appearing on the graph we dropped bait over the side," he said. "There was no time to cast [lures]."

As the chunky baitfish plummeted past the 17-foot mark, they were hammered by striped bass. The stripers weren't monstrous in size, but they were hard-charging, muscular fish wrapped in silver and black and tipping the scales to the 16-pound mark.

When the water settled, the four fishermen had eight keepers that weighed 65 pounds.

A couple of days later, the school gave up a catch of better than 50 pounds.

It was a brisk start to what has been a slow late season for Smith Mountain striper anglers. Teass believes the action is destined to get even better.

"I would say the first two-thirds of January is going to be super hot, then it may slow just a little bit," he predicted.

Teass began to see a turnaround in the fall-winter fishing about the second week of December. That's when surface or near-surface lures, like the Red Fin, Zara Spook and Hula Popper, cast around the mouth of coves and creeks began to bring jolting strikes.

That action has been best right after daylight and just before dark.

"I start at the mouth of coves and work the outside point and then the first two inside points," Teass said. "Then I am back out."

He works his surface lure with a painfully slow retrieve.

"I will crank it about four or five times, then count three seconds while letting that thing sit, pop it a couple times, then crank it about seven times," he said. "When they hit, it will almost give you a heart attack."

After the sun pops up, Teass switches to a deep-running Red Fin. Midday is for resting, and afternoons for baitfishing. Then it is back to surface lures at dusk.

The best concentrations of stripers appear to be on the Roanoke River arm of the lake, from Hales Ford bridge upstream to the train trestle below Hardy Landing. Teass has been finding some fish on the Blackwater River side, but they appear to be scattered and run smaller in size.

Now is an excellent time to take stripers on the surface, because there is little boat traffic to beat them to the depths. But don't expect to have the lake to yourself. Some days there will be so many fishermen that the key to success is switching to a lure the stripers see only occasionally. For Teass, that is the Hula Popper, one size larger than commonly used for black bass.

"I will go for something they haven't seem 100 of," he said.